Trieweiler is taking a second look at 'retiring'

The last time Terry Trieweiler 'retired" was in 1989. Six months later, he was back at work.

That was before he became a Montana Supreme Court justice. He spent a semester teaching at the University of Montana Law School, got "bored" and decided to run for the high court.

"It was either teach or something else," he said. "I went back into practice on a limited basis and then thought, the Supreme Court needed some help."

Trieweiler was on his way to Missoula to have his BMW motorcycle tuned up when he stopped by the Pilot's office. He planned to bike over to the San Juan Islands in Washington's Puget Sound the next week.

The Whitefish attorney is used to long trips. While living and raising a family in Whitefish, he "commuted" to work at law offices in Great Falls and Helena. He even owned a plane back in the 1980s, which he said he was glad to be rid of.

The Pilot ran a front-page article on Trieweiler the last time he 'retired." He was 40 years old and considered one of the best attorneys in his field by his peers. He had earned prestigious recognition and won impressive major-injury cases against large corporations.

He had served as president of both the Montana Trial Lawyers Association and the State Bar of Montana, built a fine new house near the golf course and shut down his law office. He cut his caseload down from 50 to 100 cases a year to a handful and planned to spend time with his three daughters and wife Carol.

But that was before he went to the Supreme Court, which called for running a nonpartisan statewide campaign. Trieweiler told the Pilot at the time that he had been "deeply involved in behind-the-scenes politics on the state level" but had stayed away from local politics.

"Local politics are the ugliest," he said last week. "It amazes me. People are harder on each other than in state elections. Local elections are the purest of politics, but it gets the most abuse. The issues are closer to home."

Trieweiler was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice in January 1991. He ran for chief justice the next year and lost to Jean Turnage by a quarter of a percentage point. Keeping his seat on the court, he was re-elected in 1998 but left in the middle of his second eight-year term "for a lot of reasons."

"I had to decide if I would be a justice for the rest of my career or return to practice," he said.

A justice's workload was heavier back then, he noted. Trieweiler said he saw about 700 cases a year in the early 1990s and wrote 800-some opinions while on the court. The statewide campaign was also expensive, and he wanted to limit how much money he took — which meant more of an impact to his family.

The court underwent a number of changes during his first four years on the bench that Trieweiler attributes to changes in age and philosophy by the justices.

"The average age was 72 and I was 42," he said. "I went from being on the minority to being in the majority."

Polson attorney James Manley sees it a little differently. In a May 7 letter nominating Trieweiler for the Montana Trial Lawyers Association's Trial Lawyer of the Year, Manley surmises Trieweiler's time on the court will one day be called the "Trieweiler Era."

"In the 142-year history of our Supreme Court, there is no justice who ever surpassed Terry's record for unfailing defense of the rights of the ordinary Montana citizen, and for the intelligence, depth, clarity and integrity of his decisions," Manley wrote.

Trieweiler was named Trial Lawyer of the Year for Montana. He was also selected by his peers to the 2011 edition of "The Best Lawyers in America" and the 2010 edition of "Mountain States Super Lawyers." Only 5 percent of attorneys in five Northern Rockies states make the latter list.

Manley cited four cases Trieweiler prevailed in since September 2009. Two were cases in which his clients were discriminated against because of their height or weight. Another involved a Whitefish man who was awarded $1.6 million after he suffered a fall in the Whitefish rail yard.

Trieweiler was arguing the latter case in front of a jury only days after winning a case that drew national attention — Peggy Stevens v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. Stevens, a nurse at Missoula Community Hospital, claimed she had developed osteonecrosis, "death of the jaw," from using the chemotherapy drug Zometa.

Despite the best efforts of the large pharmaceutical company, which included filing more than 400 pleadings, Trieweiler managed to bring the case to trial within nine months — which Manley called "a record for Missoula." Stevens was awarded a $3.2 million verdict against Novartis.

Trieweiler and Mississippi attorney Bob Germany, his partner in the Novartis case, will defend that verdict in front of the Montana Supreme Court on Sept. 23., where Trieweiler will encounter some familiar faces on the bench.

Trieweiler left a legacy on the Supreme Court in environmental, consumer and equal rights protection, open government, individual privacy, corporate accountability and due process decisions. The 1972 Montana Constitution has strong environmental provisions, Trieweiler explained, but until the makeup of the Supreme Court changed, attorneys were reluctant to appeal cases to the high court. That all changed in the 1990s, he said.

In the 1999 case brought by the Montana Environmental Information Center against the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, for example, the court was asked to decide how much arsenic must be in a pristine trout stream before the state constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment was violated.

In deciding the case, the high court referred to the minutes of the 1972 Constitutional Convention to determine the intent of the delegates. Trieweiler said the precedent set in that case is easy to understand.

"Some might not want to understand it and say it imposes unreasonable regulations on industry," he said. "I don't think it does. The state constitution not only requires that environmental impacts must be cleaned up, but the state must also be proactive and prevent environmental damage ahead of time."

Trieweiler, who went to Drake University on a football scholarship (he played middle linebacker), has given up handball and basketball. He long ago sold his interest in the "platform tennis' court he described to the Pilot in 1989.

"I still work out every day at The Wave — on the stationary bike, the stair machine and weight-lifting," he said.

Trieweiler attributed his success back in 1989 to long hours, being good at the kind of work he does, being in the right place at the right time, and handling money responsibly. He still believes that.

"There are more lawsuits now and more lawyers not qualified to do what they say they can do — they're reaching," he said.

He attributes some of that to the high cost of higher education — lawyers who come out of school saddled with $200,000 in debt.

"We don't need as many lawyers as we have," he said. "Law schools have become profit centers."

Trieweiler isn't saying he's 'retiring." He's closed his office in Helena and plans to stop practicing full-time in March next year. He'll be more selective in what cases he takes on after that and spend more time with his granddaughters — who live "across the street" — and read some Tony Hillerman, Lee Child, Steig Larson, Steve Berry and Elmore Leonard mysteries.

"During that time, I'll decide whether to return to what I've been doing on a more limited basis or do something entirely different," he said. "I've learned better than to predict that I'm going to retire."